place the white men moved, followed by the Indians.  The latter were very friendly and exerted themselves to win the confidence of the white men.  Three days passed but no white girls showed up.  The chief assured Wright that they were coming, that they were a long way off and would be on hand two days later.  In the meantime the watchful white men observed that the numbers of the Indians had more than doubled and more and more were coming with each succeeding day.  They became suspicious and their suspicions ripened into a certainty that treachery was meditated.  At the expiration of the two days Ben Wright informed his men of his plans.  He was satisfied that the girls would never be surrendered, but that the Indians, now outnumbering them five to one, intended a massacre.  Accordingly he told his men to quietly make ready; that he was going to the chief and if he refused to surrender the girls he would kill him then and there.  He warned his men to pay no attention to him, that he would make his way out as best he could; that they must open fire at the instant his pistol rang out; that they were in a desperate situation and must resort to desperate measures or all would be butchered then and there.

The morning was cool, Riddle said, and Ben Wright covered himself with a blanket, his head passing through a hole in the middle, as was the custom of the time, the blanket answering the place of an overcoat.  Underneath the blanket he carried a revolver in each hand.  He went directly to the chief and demanded that he make his promises good.  The chief told him plainly, insolently, that he would not do so, and never intended to do so; that he had men enough to kill the white men and that they were now in his power.  But the wily old chief little dreamed of the desperate valor of the man before him, for no sooner had the chief’s defy passed his lips than Ben Wright shot him dead.  Then firing right and left as he ran, he made his escape out of the Indian camp.  Meanwhile, as the first shot rang out from Wright’s pistol his men opened a deadly fire with their rifles.  For an instant, Riddle said, the savages formed a line and sent a shower of arrows over their heads, but they aimed too high and only one or two were slightly wounded.  Dropping their rifles, Wright’s men charged, revolvers in hand.  This was too much for savage valor and what were left fled in terror.  It was now no longer a battle.  The savages were searched out from among the sage brush and shot like rabbits.  Long poles were taken from the wickiups and those taking refuge in the river were poked out and shot as they struggled in the water.  To avoid the bullets the Indians would dive and swim beneath the water, but watching the bubbles rise as they swam, the men shot them when they came up for air.

This is the true story of the “Ben Wright Massacre.”  It was a massacre all right, but did not terminate as the Indians intended.  Riddle told me that about ninety Indians were killed in this fight.  It broke the war power of the Modoc Indians as a tribe for all time, and from that day the white man could pass unvexed through the country of the Modocs.  There were probably isolated cases of murder, but nothing approaching war ever again existed in the minds of the Modocs.